NT is an upgraded version of dos. no matter what you say.
NT was based on dos, thats why you can use ntfs and dos filesystems.
i am not saying it IS dos.
i am saying it is dos's youger brother.
its like saying apple sauce is not apples. it was, you used em to make it. thats why it is called APPLE sauce. it is in some way based on or derived from APPLES.
saying NT has no relation to dos is like saying mac has no relation to unix.
its just not so.
NT is a different architecture, that was directly based on dos.
why is that so hard to understand.

1. Is Linux the Iphone Language? - Linux is not a Language It is a UNIX based operating system.

2. I was told that the Iphone uses Linux. - You heard wrong iPhone uses a "slim" version of Mac OS.

3. If it doesn't what programming language does it use? - iPhone applications (native) are developed using Obj-C (Objective C) as primary development language.

4. Years ago we programmers developed Cobolt, Basic, C, etc. - The name is "COBOL", Cobolt is a cheap car

5. I had my conflicts with Apple over writing software for their machines but still produced programs for the market. - Oh really? I doubt you write software. If you do, what LANGUAGE do you use? Windows? Fedora Core?Ubuntu?

6. Now here is the question...I want to be able to see movies on the web but this Iphone needs a flash type player. I know there must be some young genius out there who could come up with this application. - Apple and Adobe are currently working to come out with Flash support on iPhone.

1. Is Linux the Iphone Language? - Linux is not a Language It is a UNIX based operating system.

2. I was told that the Iphone uses Linux. - You heard wrong iPhone uses a "slim" version of Mac OS.

3. If it doesn't what programming language does it use? - iPhone applications (native) are developed using Obj-C (Objective C) as primary development language.

4. Years ago we programmers developed Cobolt, Basic, C, etc. - The name is "COBOL", Cobolt is a cheap car

5. I had my conflicts with Apple over writing software for their machines but still produced programs for the market. - Oh really? I doubt you write software. If you do, what LANGUAGE do you use? Windows? Fedora Core?Ubuntu?

6. Now here is the question...I want to be able to see movies on the web but this Iphone needs a flash type player. I know there must be some young genius out there who could come up with this application. - Apple and Adobe are currently working to come out with Flash support on iPhone.

Windows NT kernel written directly in ASM, the lowest level programming language.
(low level language are close to the machine language itself, and high language are close to human speak)

Unix is not an OS, its standard and there is a few Operating System who are following this standard, IBM AIX and Sun Solaris to name a few.

OSX Leopard is compatible with the "Single UNIX Specification version 3", so yes its a UNIX operating system

The iPhone OS is not UNIX 3 certified, but its based on the UNIX certified Leopard Kernel.

Linux is a completely different Operating System kernel, written from scratch, that is close to the UNIX standard. In fact, Linux is POSIX compatible and is inspired of many UNIX principe.

Linux is written in the programming language C

OSX use the Darwin kernel

Darwin is not really a modified release of FreeBSD kernel. Its a Mach 3 microkernel with element of BSD.

What you ask here, is to take the Linux Mozilla Firefox engine and the linux flash plugin and to port it to iPhone software.

But there are a few issue,

1 - Port Firefox to iPhone
2- Port the Flash plugin to iPhone Firefox

The first one is a huge task, while the second issue is impossible to resolve, because that Flash not an open standard but a closed source software that belong to Adobe.

For this reason, the Flash port need to be done by Adobe, and this will never happen.
Instead, its a more possible scenario, that Adobe will work with Apple to provide a working plugin for iPhone Safari.

But again, there is a few issue.

1 - Performance, because that Flash is CPU and memory intensive and the iPhone is still just powerful phone
2 - Apple interrest

While the performance issue can be resolved, or maybe partically, its not in Apple interrest to allow Flash on their phone.

1 - Because that you can build great application with Flash, it compete the highly profitable Apps Store.
2 - Flash performance and overall experience can't be good as native apps, so its a good thing for apple to force developer to create native app.
3 - Apple try to follow standard, and its common move from them to boycott stuff like Flash, Silverlight, and other non standard crap who are preventing user to move away from Windows world.

Windows NT and subsequent OS's based on it are based on a derivative of some unix microkernel. Windows stopped being DOS based when it stopped being a 16 bit system, which was several years ago. The "DOS window" is (or was) a 16 bit subsystem of Windows, not something on which Windows is based and if you boot Windows into recovery mode and you think you're in DOS, you've never actually seen DOS. Other than a command line, there's nothing similar between them whatsoever.

It's based on a UNIX system:P not Linux but UNIX...The same goes for Mac OSX...However Linux apps are rewritable to work on Mac OSX...I think UNIX is like Linux...But not exactly the same..

The Linux Kernel is actually written in C and assembly. No C++ in it, except for a few (very few) modules not included in the official kernel. And Darwin is BSD based, not UNIX based. BSD is UNIX based though.

All this is quite confusing and does not explain why, when installing new apps with Cydia, you see a Linux terminal which clearly installs Debian Linux packages for the arm architecture (*arm.deb files).
I am a iPhone noob, but was excited as I saw this, as I was/still try to get a arm-Debian Linux OS to work on the Moto V8.
So any thoughts about this?

i have expensive flash based web applications that are supposed to be multi-platform.
while i don't know the original poster's intent in asking the question, i do not believe the use of flash is merely a video conversion issue for some who need it.
and i hasten to point out that flash apps can and are embedded in acrobat pro authored pdf-s so that blows the video conversion tactic right out of the water, sadly.

I saw mention at the beginning of this thread flash for iPhone - not sure if this was covered, but Adobe is coming out with Flash CS5 and an iPhone Packager that will allow development of iPhone Apps. So it's not flash running on the phone, but pretty cool for flash developers. Here is the Adobe page.